1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an ink-jet printing cloth and a textile printing process. In particular, this invention relates to an ink-jet printing cloth which is composed mainly of cellulose fibers and can be dyed for obtaining highly colored, bright and fine patterns with high color yield upon formation of a printed image by an ink-jet system, a textile printing process using such a cloth, and prints provided by this process.
2. Related Background Art
At present, textile printing is principally conducted by screen printing or roller printing. Both methods require making a plate, and are hence unfit for multi-kind small-quantity production and difficult to quickly cope with the fashion of the day. Therefore, there has recently been a demand for development of an electronic printing system making no use of any plate. In compliance with this demand, many textile printing processes according to ink-jet recording have been proposed. Various fields expect much from such textile printing processes.
Ink-jet printing cloths used in such a system are required to have the following performance characteristics:
(1) being colored with an ink to a sufficient color depth; PA1 (2) being dyed high in color yield with an ink; PA1 (3) causing an ink on the cloth to quickly dry; PA1 (4) causing little irregular bleeding of inks on the cloth; PA1 (5) being excellent in feedability in apparatus; and PA1 (6) stably providing a print.
In order to satisfy these performance requirements, the surface of a cloth has heretofore been subjected to a pretreatment in advance, thereby coping with these requirements.
Cloths having an ink-receiving layer have been disclosed, for example, in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 62-53492, and cloths containing an antireducing agent and an alkaline substance therein have been proposed in Japanese Patent Publication No. 3-46589.
According to such pretreatments, considerable effects are partially recognized on the above requirements. However, whether a printed image after a final process is superior or inferior often still depends on the basic properties inherent in a cloth to be used. There is thus a problem that satisfactory cloths can not yet be obtained. As described above, means capable of satisfying the above individual performance characteristics to some extent have been able to be found in the prior art. However, there have not yet been known under the circumstances any ink-jet printing cloth and textile printing process which can satisfy all the above-mentioned performance characteristics at the same time, solve such a series of problems and provide the highest-quality image.